light with a great mingling of colours. Beautiful, but more than
beautiful! Other lands had beauty, too, more beauty, perhaps, than
Ireland, but if he were leaving them as he was now leaving Ireland, he
should not feel the grief that he now felt. This was his land ... his
own country ... and the elements which had been mingled to make it, had
been mingled also to make him, and he and it were one. It was strange
that he should carry so heavy a heart to Boveyhayne, when he should have
gone there gladly ... but it was not of Mary or his marriage that he was
then thinking. It was of the farewell he was making to this old city
which had known much grief and many troubles. When he returned to
Ireland he would go straight to Ballymartin, by Belfast, from England.
He would not see Dublin again. Firmly fixed in his mind, was that
belief. He would serve ... and he would die. Foolish, he told himself,
to think like that, but, even while he was rebuking himself, the thought
thrust itself into his mind again....

5

The boat was almost out of sight of land. He had stood at the end of the
deck, gazing back at Ireland until only the clouded head of a mountain
could be seen, and then that too had been hidden. He turned and looked
forward, and as he did so, he saw in the distance, low in the sea, the
hulls of three ships of war. The mail-boat slowed down, as they
approached, to let them pass. Naked and lithe, they looked, as they
thrust their bodies through the sea, sending the water up from their
bows in shining arches. He could see the men standing about the decks,
looking steadily ahead ... and then the war-ships passed on to their
work, and the mail-boat gathered up speed and plunged on towards Wales.
Over there, he thought, somewhere in that haze, is England, and beyond
England, France and Flanders and the fields of blood and pain....

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

* * * * *

The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the
same author.

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

John Ferguson: A Play in Four Acts

_Cloth, 12mo., $1.00_

In Europe Mr. Ervine is perhaps better known for his contributions to
the theatre than for his fiction, a number having been presented by the
Irish Players at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. "John Ferguson" is as
serious and important a piece of work as he has ever done. In the
development of his plot Mr. Ervine not only evidences a skill in
c